While nine postgraduate students were permanently terminated in a senate meeting held in December, nine undergraduate students were terminated in a senate meeting held Tuesday.

The team, which includes researchers from Indian Institute Technology (IIT) Kanpur, developed a brain-computer interface (BCI) that can 'read' a person's brain waves and convert them to computer signals.

Sources in the institute said a general body meeting of the faculty forum was organised on campus Thursday, where its members again expressed anguish at the "lack of action" by the institute.

A letter signed by faculty forum convener Veejendra K Yadav and sent to Karandikar, the meeting was attended by 130 faculty members who expressed their “deep anguish at the lack of action by the institute after a previous resolution on the same”.

Three of the accused professors — Sanjay Mittal, Chandra Shekhar Upadhyay (of the aerospace department) and Ishan Sharma (mechanical department) — are presently serving at IIT-Kanpur while Dr Rajiv Shekhar was shifted to IIT-Dhanbad a few months ago. He is now the institute’s director.

The Allahabad High Court has given the respondent’s counsel two weeks to file a counter-affidavit, and the petitioners another two weeks to file another affidavit in response.

The recommendation came on Friday after a three-member panel found Dalit faculty member Subrahmanyam Saderla’s allegations of harassment at the hands of Ishan Sharma, Sanjay Mittal, Rajeev Shekhar and Chandra Shekhar Upadhyay to be true.